press

Intervention by Mekhitar Garabedian - fig. a, a comme alphabet

fig. a, a comme alphabet This series of works is based on exercises made while learning the Armenian alphabet. The repeated letters form patterns which, while recognisable as signs, remain incomprehensible to non-Armenians. This documentation of a learning-moment relates to the loss of the mother tongue experienced through migration in general, and specifically by the Armenians living in the diaspora. Exile reduces the old language to a corpse. At the same time Garabedian is exploring the relation between signifiers and signified, comprehension and incomprehension. (Courtesy the artist and Baronian Xippas)

5 | the FRONT SPACE | Sanne De Wolf - La Résistance

There ’s always a playful tension in the work of Sanne De Wolf. The Belgian artist is quite outspoken when it comes to certain evolutions in today’s society. Whether that involves feminism, religion, migration or other contemporary issues. Sanne consistently incorporates her personal opinions and feelings in her artistic work. Take her Salon des Réfugiés (2016), where she worked with female refugees who after a dialogue with Sanne stitched and handworked their way straight into the MHKA in Antwerp or this year’s Sentinel project, bringing the artist to Iran’s capital Teheran. There, Sanne would build up her moment, selling her scarves at busy crossroads for fifteen minutes at a time. A guerilla sale that brought about fantastic reactions of clients that immediately fell in love with her art: a product for daily use, but a conversation starter none the less.

The words ‘playful’ and ‘tension’ are carefully chosen. Sanne’s work always involves a second meaning, a kind of double entendrethat is meant to be understood, yet not necessarily needs more explanation. With her art she dares us to stretch our mind and hopes to invoke a discussion, and why not: a world of contradicting opinions. For her Sentinel project, the scarves are exactly what they are meant to be: regular hijabsso to speak, perfect for a safe walk in the park in muslim territory. Yet, upon further inspection, the print gets surrealistic dimensions. It raises questions. What exactly does the print mean? What does it stand for ? Is it bold critisism, in a country that is making progress, but (to our Western eye) not fast enough? Will it empower women, in a regime that wants to silence them rather than give them a voice ? Or is it a simple poetic gesture, that is yet strong enough to break the silence ?

Sanne De Wolf always points out clearly what we as human beings feel deep inside, watching or reading the daily news. Trough her art, she voices her own frustration and her own anger, but eventually that feeling evolves towards utter respect, imminent change, and hope. For without hope, we are nothing. A credo Sanne treasures.

Veerle Windels

2019

44 | Pieter-Jan de Pue - KINGS OF AFGHANISTAN

Pieter-Jan De Pue – better still: ‘PJ’, as he is known – is the most ‘healthily curious’ person I have ever met. When you get to know him, he initially comes across as a kind of contemporary explorer. Classic explorers would travel to all four corners of the globe in order to improve and civilise people in Europe’s image. When Marco Polo, Vasco De Gama and finally Stanley departed for far-off lands, theirs was not a cultural mission, but a political and economic one wrapped in a veneer of culture and religion. They travelled to other parts of the world to improve them, to civilise them in their own and our image, and above all, to derive economic profit from them along the way.

PJ learnt about Afghanistan from the VRT News. It was Jef Lambrecht’s (1948-2016) excellent commentary that awoke his fascination for this mysterious country. PJ was able to question Jef in depth, and it was he who set him on his course.

Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and China together span an area of six hundred and fifty thousand square kilometres. There are thirty million Afghans, 80% of whom are Sunnis and 19% Shiites. Half of them speak Dari, a variant of Farsi from Iran, and 35% speak Pashtu. Following attempts by England to impose colonial rule on Afghanistan, it has taken first the Soviet Union and then the United States (and their allies) half a century to work out that a contemporary colonisation of Afghanistan is impossible. Afghans are a poor but proud people in a rich, monumentally beautiful country.

The world premiere of Pieter-Jan’s docufiction The Land of the Enlightenedwas at the Sundance Festival in Salt Lake City in 2016, where he was immediately awarded the prize for Best Cinematography. After that, the film was screened at multiple foreign festivals and he won numerous international prizes. In 2017, Pieter-Jan received the Flemish Culture Prize for Film.

Pieter-Jan graduated from the RITS in Brussels in 2006 as a filmmaker, but he first discovered Afghanistan as a photographer. In exchange for travel and accommodation expenses, he photographed the country for NGOs. It was during these trips that his plan to create a docufiction developed. The land of the Enlightenedwas created between 2007 and 2015, a period of more than eight years. Afghanistan is a country that does not come with an instruction manual. Some places are accessible on horseback, others only on foot or by helicopter. PJ records the deep gazes of the Afghans and the boundlessness of their landscape. Nothing in this trip, in these photos or in this film was entirely anticipated.

As well as researching, preparing and making his film, PJ also continued to take photographs. His photos are portraits of people and landscapes, as are his diary entries. A recurring theme is his huge admiration for the country, its spectacular landscape, and the resourceful children for whom survival became the art of living.

It was never PJ’s intention to make a political film. He does not judge and he never condemns. He refuses to take sides, unless it is that of his natural allies for the film: a group of Afghan children. They became his friends and shared their secrets with PJ. A Soviet army vehicle graveyard is a fabulous playground for them. A ten-year-old who has already lost one leg speaks softly to the mine that he is prising open in order to sell the still-usable explosive to those working in the Lapiz Lazuli mines. Via a story that unfurls in between reality and imagination, in between the dreams and the actions of small smuggler-soldiers, PJ tells us the tale of his Afghan king and the princess to whom he promised the Palace in Kabul.

The story in the film is a fiction that makes the facts easier to comprehend. Every image hovers between fiction and reality. Like the Dadaist image of the man with the horse and the bed with the rolled-up mattress in the middle of nowhere. This is not a staged composition, but the photo of a resting place for a horse and its rider somewhere on a journey in Afghanistan.

PJ’s photos and film are an ode to patience. He likes to talk about the gallons of tea that he drunk with village elders. In this highly feudal country, you have to show respect to all the petty rulers. Everyone wants to be acknowledged and this acknowledgement is primarily expressed in time. Time is a mark of respect.

Time is also an essential component of quality, certainly when it comes to the creation of these images. All credit to the producer Bart Van Langendonck who (… sometimes through gritted teeth …) accepted yet another delay and ‘understood’ yet another budgetary deviation. During the making of the film, the distance between reality ‘on the ground’ in Afghanistan and the interpretation and knowledge of the facts by the production team in Brussels was immense. Bart Van Langendonck has never been to Afghanistan … because he did not want to witness ‘the dangers’ at first hand. He feared that more information might have convinced him not to continue with the project because the risks for staff were too great.

The Land of the Enlightenedis also the story of a strong team. Sound engineer Henk Rabau (1966 - 2017) played a crucial role in winter 2014 during the final, most difficult shoots in the Pamir Mountains. This is the most important part of the film with the children surrounding the main character Gholam Nasir. Henk was more than just a soundman. His flexibility, practical intelligence and empathy made him the ideal camera assistant who also kept track of the script. He was also aware of the metres of film that had to be shot every day. He took care of the food supplies for both humans and animals, as well as the fuel for the Land Cruiser and the generator. He charged the batteries and repaired technical defects. He both rewrote and rethought the script with PJ if this seemed necessary. Without Henk, the shoot in 2014 would not have been possible following the attack on the team by the Taliban in 2013. This is why PJ dedicated the Flemish Culture Prize for Film to Henk Rabau.

The Afghan team members also deserve a special mention. Wais Amiree was the production manager in and around Kabul. His calmness and smart approach to the negotiations with the numerous authorities did wonders, and made it possible to film in sensitive places. The assistants Najib Sahil and Aman Mohammedi were very faithful allies. Camera assistant Quasim Housseini was on exactly the same wavelength artistically. Today, he continues to work as a director in Afghanistan.

Bram Celis was the sound engineer during the filming with the American army in 2010. With his humour and daring, he made the dangerous moments lighter and more bearable. Sound technician Boban Bajic Slobodan and camera assistant Brice Dujardin made a valuable contribution to the shoot in the Lapiz Lazuli mine. Grégoire Verbeke, director’s assistant and a good friend, was the perfect sounding board during the last two years of the production process, both in Afghanistan and during the post-production in 2014 and 2015. With the making of the film The Last Omelette,he created an authentic and sincere record of the film’s genesis. In 2015 the project reached its conclusion with a trip to Pamir to screen the film for the children and the group of people around Gholam Nasir in the high mountains. This projection was the finale of eight years in Afghanistan.

I got to know PJ via choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. I spoke to him just before his second departure for Afghanistan and promised to organise an exhibition at deBuren in Brussels of the photos that at that point did not yet exist. PJ fills you with confidence. deBuren exhibited the first images in 2008. In 2011 the photos travelled to the Biermans-Lapôtre Foundation in Paris and in 2016 they were exhibited at Gallery C41 in Antwerp.

PJ’s images – both film and photos – come about as a result of a slow process. The landscapes with caravans of people and animals taken from the helicopter show the silence of Afghanistan. Despite the presence of thirty million Afghans, the country is, above all, empty.

The people and especially the children that PJ depicts are the country’s magicians. They have been hardened by the capricious climate in which they live. The ‘actors’ that PJ introduces in his docufiction are all facing a camera for the first time. The fact that PJ presented their film on an improvised screen in an exclusive screening beneath the Afghan sky is a tribute to the warm atmosphere and to the great respect that he has for these debutants. The Land of the Enlightenedis thus also a film about a relationship between a very attentive Westerner who directs images with enormous care, and happy, grown-up Afghan children who want to be viewed heedfully and with love.

Afghanistan is a ‘farming country’ with a highly specialised agriculture. Afghanistan is a ‘country of conflict’ with complex geo-political interests and a rich, still-to-be exploited subsoil. With these images, PJ has shown that Afghanistan is also a country of smart and exceptionally talented people. In Afghanistan, the forces of nature are the most dominant feature. But the Afghans inspire admiration. With new rituals, the men, women and children of this country are on the road from antiquity to modernity, but it is they themselves who will determine the rhythm and speed of their history.

With these photos - and his film - Pieter-Jan De Pue gives us a lesson in contemporary diplomacy. It is a privilege to gaze through his lens with him. He teaches us to see more and to look more attentively.

Dorian van der Brempt

5 December 2017

43 | Octave Vandeweghe - COSMIC GESTURES

In Cosmic Gestures the artist Octave Vandeweghe (1988) delves deeper into superstitions and spiritualism surrounding minerals and stones. Gestures of adornment and the magical properties that people have bestowed upon stones over the centuries, intrigued the artist and led him to create a series of object-artifacts.

Vandeweghe’s work continues to explore the tension between nature and culture, and exhibits a fascination with human habits and prehistoric tools. By establishing a connection between the evolution of a flint knife, a menhir, a teeth necklace and a crystal, the artist investigates how the primitive is still dominant today. Blowing up the tools in scale, he creates stone sculptures which acquire a mystical quality, becoming vessels archaic of energy.

“When I am creating things and some stone breaks, I try to engage it and enhance this brokenness.” The work is a continuation of a previous project, Cultured Manners, where Octave transformed gemstones into cutlery, creating poetic tension between functionality and beauty.

4 | the FRONT space | FAKE FLOWERS

“Traveling seemed useless to him, since he believed that the imagination could easily replace the ordinary reality of things.”

In the Front Space #4 Clarisse Bruynbroeck and Ralph Collier highlight, with Fake Flowers, the impact that fiction has on our lives.

Inspired by Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel À Rebours, the exhibition is based on the staging of our reality. Subtitled “A Novel Without a Plot,” the narrative concerns of main character Des Esseintes’s attempts to escape his secular life and to settle far beyond civilization by creating a sophisticated artificial world.

Fake Flowers plays on the overlaps between fiction and reality, blurring the boundaries between presentation and representation. Anthe Hermans, Damiano Curschellas, Ralph Collier and Tim Verherstraeten explore the use of storytelling, metaphorical language and fiction to investigate how fiction slips into everyday life.

artists:

Anthe Hermans,

Damiano Curschellas,

Ralph Collier,

Tim Verherstraeten

Currated by

Clarisse Bruynbroeck & Ralph Collier

42 | IMAGE IMAGINER - D.D.TRANS

Solo exhition of D.D.TRANS at valerie_traan
simultaneously with GEERT VANOORLé

—

Tout court

In negligent moments we are often the boldest artists. Everybody knows them; drawings that arise mindlessly during a telephone conversation, sculptures like the chewed head of a pen, or the to a ball kneaded wrap of a biscuit at a boring table. It is during those rare leftover times that, often out of boredom, we softly fall out of our cultivated heads and simply do. Tout court.

This reminds of an uninhibited, tactile encounter with things. The apparent worthless workaday stuff that surround us en masse, are those that DD Trans embraces.

A simple scourer is so replaceable that we even forgot to invent a colour for it. Exactly because of this, such daily treasures form the most random, honest and frenzied palette. That also counts for the balloon, which in all its futility only serves for game. It can hardly and merely temporarily become a thing, if we offer it some air and tie it. DD Trans savours and transforms this innocence. He ties it together with the unbearable lightness of a kitsch painting. He cherishes the sneaky game of a boy with father’s lighter. The greatest melancholy shelters in that permissive experiential game. He heats a straw to the two dangling halves of a tear. A collector declared that work ‘more exciting than Jaws’. Two fused pushpins are baptised ‘b fifty 2’. It is a title with the charge of a bomber, for things two a penny; atomic art, tensions contained in the very smallest, tragedy by stealth.

Do I perceive a kind of nostalgia for that unprejudiced glance at a child’s bike, so desperately outgrown? Life, like the alphabet on our dark keyboard, is limited. You won’t get away from that. With age the glass will get fogged up and a needless amount of values and seriousness sneak in between us and the world. The work of DD Trans appears unsightly light, but it is a sustained effort to maintain the interaction with things lucid and without pretentions. And just in this small margin, in that short chain between seeing and making, lies the greatest space for poetry and magic.

Text by Frederik Van Laere
Photo Bird Day Party door David Samyn - other images by Ligia Poplawska

42 | IMAGE IMAGINER - GEERT VANOORLé

Solo exhition of GEERT VANOORLé at valerie_traan
simultaneously with D.D.TRANS

—

intimi

Serendipity ;- the act of finding something unexpected and valuable, while the finder was looking for something entirely different.

It had snowed that day. White light falls through the attic windows of the atelier. The paintings welcome me. They present themselves as girlfriends, lying next to one another on a beach. Their bodies are scarcely clothed. A green bikini, or a pink swimsuit. For the rest, there is their naked body. Next, they go for a swim and lie themselves down again on the canvas in another composition.

The shifting provisionality by which the sublime nature of a simple beach scene repeats itself over and over again refers to the visually shifting provisional character of the paintings.

They sternly refuse to choose position but hesitate to take their place in the space. Some paintings rest on two small wooden pins, some on a slat against the wall, yet others have been nailed to the wall almost imperceptibly.

The paintings whisper in colours and reflect upon their shame. Their appearance is of aluminium or some other sort of thin metal, which makes them look from a distance like paper. In some cases, Geert Vanoorlé has folded the aluminium in such a way that the colour of the back side shows at the front, and by means of this turnup determines the composition of the picture.

On occasion, the painter folds the far ends of the four sides of the aluminium sheet up towards the front at an angle of 90°, thus creating the lid of a box, of which he only colours the inside of the folded edges. The modelling of the aluminium alienates the metal and the act of folding seems to repeat itself before the eyes of the observer.For some of his creations, Geert Vanoorlé uses metal shears to round off or otherwise clip the corners of the brass sheet.

Suddenly, the artist pulls out two curled metal clippings and bounces the long golden spirals up and down in his hands.

The extreme and consistent way in which the painter disconnects the imagery of the painting from the actual painting act, by indirectly eliciting the image and the composition through such modest acts as folding and clipping, renders the paintings disengaged and bereft of sensation.

Geert Vanoorlé thoroughly contemplates the relationship between the work of art and its environment. The way in which the artist set up two painted paper parallelograms in a staircase of the old Courthouse in Ghent for an exhibition in 2018 exemplifies his deliberate way of dealing with surfaces in space. The two parallelograms seem to float on the wall as if projected by a light source.

The contemporaneity of his latest paintings is to be found in their material reduction to the conceptual acuity of their metal carrier – and is the answer of the painter to the present-day commotions. All his paintings are intimi of Charles Baudelaire’s well-known verse and Henri Matisse’s painting it inspired: “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté.”

At the end of my visit, the artist spreads out two bedsheets on the gray-varnished wooden floor. Upon unfolding the sheets, he each time exposes four metal sheets which he then positions next to one another.

In this exhibition, Gallery Valerie Traan brings an homage to the “art of building”. Annemie Augustijns, Sofie Van der Linden en Katleen Vinck have let their artistic practice be inspired by the controversial (because for some time threatened to be demolished) student residences that the Belgian architect and furniture designer Willy Van Der Meeren (1923-2002) built in 1972 for the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. (VUB)

Willy Van Der Meeren loathed the word architecture. Even worse he thought of the buzzword ‘design’. He rather spoke of “building art”. Of the art of reaching maximal results with simple materials. With plywood plaques, rubber hosepipes, cheap wood kinds, corrugated iron, but above all with steel and concrete Van Der Meeren – with Le Corbusier in mind- built modular living units customised to the masses. Or for students. Since the student residences that he erected for the VUB illustrate his vision.

For years on end, students named this colourful site ‘the Club Med’ of the campus. This name was probably inspired by the simple and modular character of the building plan. Van Der Meeren planted five living units on the VUB site, which were repeatedly made up of two floors. Every floor was equipped with a kitchen and a bathroom, which were shared between the inhabitants of the four connected student rooms. Van Der Meeren ensured the recognisability of every living unit by providing each of them with a remarkable colour. But it is especially the choice of materials that bespeaks the controversially creative mind of the building-artist. To enter their lodging, students have to take three treads on a quirky staircase: a stack of pre-fabricated concrete elements out of the railway industry.

The heritage of modernism is something that has been occupying Annemie Augustijns for several years. In a previous photography series, she examined, amongst other elements, the colour use of modernist architecture. Or what is left of it. Because notwithstanding her fascination for the aesthetics of these iconic buildings, Annemie is not blind fortheir expiry date. How relevant are these forms and colours still for us nowadays? And how have man and nature come to crack the iconic image imprinted on our retina when we contemplate Modernism?Augustijns leaves these questions without an answer. But the pragmatic way by which she captures the crucial elements of the Van Der Meeren heritage betrays that – whilst still beautiful - something in it has been irrevocably broken.

The artistic practice of Sofie Van der Linden roots in the marvel for the way in which mankind furnishes its living environment. Whatever catches her eye in everyday reality, firstly gets a repercussion in her sketchbooks. In a following stage, Van der Linden digs further into these notes and drawings to process them into studies in which she maps the use of space, building or object. How can we imagine the way in which Van Der Meeren’s living units were used on a daily basis? What about the orientation and the view from every student room? And which structuring role do the paths that connect the labyrinth-site play? The end result of this nearly sociological research are autonomous, abstract drawings. From a distance these seem rather cold geometrical abstractions, but from nearby the pencil drawings bespeak an almost vulnerable naivety. The contrast between the with the loosely hand-drawn pencil lines on the one hand, and the massive, dark-coloured pencil planes on the other grant the works a poetic, still self-aware character.

Katleen Vinck has eye for the essential characters of natural or cultural sites. By investigating and purifying that essence in her studio, Vinck attains an entirely idiosyncratic morphology. With Willy Van Der Meeren she shares a liking for the radical simplicity of a functional form. And with her fascination for primordial constructions, like the dolmen, Vinck is in fact not far removed from Van Der Meeren’s minimalistic modernism. For this exhibition Vinck made three sequences of sculptures wherein her own fascination for the primordial form –cave- and the primal material –rock- interlaced both literally and figuratively with Van Der Meeren’s search for a “building art” of piled up functional simplicity (basic units, basic cells/basic modules).

40 | Filip Dujardin - MEMORABILIA

‘Memorial IV’ will take the central stage in Filip Dujardin’s first solo exhibition at Valerie Traan, MEMORABILIA. This photographic collage is part of the still expanding series ‘memorial’ in which Filip Dujardin interrogates art-historical archetypes and processes them into new compositions. Architectural fragments are lifted out of their respective time-zone and geographical contexts, and rebuilt in a new environment. By bringing widely diverse architectural elements together, Filip Dujardin compresses architectural art history and provokes unseen tensions to arise.

‘Memorial IV’ shows a ruin of waste with pieces, shards, clipped and crushed construction material. The image requires a moment of contemplation before we can deduce the improbability of its entirety. Chunks of succumbed 18th century row houses, crumbled full-marble Corinthian columns originating from a Greek temple, reinforcing steel of a modernistic high-rise with their concrete slabs and sunken windows are piled together to a concentrated whole in a pixel-ruin.

This exhibition solidifies an interplay between picture, collage and materiality. ‘Maybe photography has always been a detour for me to be able to come to the building,’ declares Dujardin. The material takes the overhand in this exhibition. Dujardin mines and slogs in his photographic rubble, cuts himself at the glass pieces and moves through the mountain of architectural fragments in order to wriggle out the exact piece needed. A bar of reinforcement steel that is bent over to a leg of a chair, the elected piece of marble that is being edged to fit into the concrete flat of the table, a crushed brick that is shaved to become part of a rock.

Cutting, pasting and then re-assembling, have become Filip Dujardin’s embodied practices, which forms the basis of both his photographic and sculptural work. Dujardin approaches Memorabilia in a similar way, but then in an earthlier manner, more grounded. Enclosed by his materials and tools, he surrenders himself to their essences. The materials are shattered, distorted and dissected before they are once again reconstructed and re-assembled. Filip Dujardin’s objects are built up from a wide range of unrelated materials, which he comprises and reforms. Dujardin’s sculptures and furniture then carry themselves with a similar art-historical density that renders his photographic work unique.

In MEMORABILIA, the debris form the pixels of Dujardin’s objects. A lamp, set up from a broken glass plate of 1m², a glass window of which the lines are drawn by the fall, and were the soldered back together by a thin line of lead. Concrete tables and chairs in which a slice of marble is fitted, as if it were a polished diamond which lights up rough concrete. During the work process, Dujardin remains loyal to the essence of his materials. His objects demonstrate how they react to their adaptations, and the abradings, bursts and imperfections remind us of the primal working processes of stonemasons, glasscutters and bricklayers. Filip Dujardin brings us in contact with the vulnerabilities of the materials that surround us. His works exposes the intimate relation between man and object, and it is exactly the demonstration of this intimate connection that makes that his objects speak to us with such intruding visual potency.

LH 2018
Pictures by Filip Dujardin

39 | CUT - Valerie Traan Gallery at Antwerp Art Pavilion

Octave Vandeweghe, Katleen Vinck and Timo van Grinsven were invited by Gallery Valerie Traan to exhibit in the Antwerp Art Pavilion in the shadow of the MAS. They chose the mysterious title ⍧☋☨ for their exhibition. They were inspired by the archaeological and anthropological collections of the MAS, after Curator Annemie De Vos gave them a guided tour in the depot of the museum. The three artists exhibit new work that is related to artefacts and objects from archaeological excavations and sites, and to the collection and conservation of these objects in a museum. Like the pieces in the collection of the MAS, their artworks are artefacts, not of an old lost civilisation, but of our own time.

During their visit, the three artists became fascinated by visual languages that are no longer in use, by hieroglyphs that can no longer be deciphered. Hence the title of this exhibition: ⍧☋☨. And hence the strange signs they apply to the windows of the pavilion.

Octave Vandeweghe(1988) became known with his 'Cultured Manners', a confrontation between gems and cutlery, but here he shows three large objects. The first, a sarcophagus in the shape of a large crystal, is made of so-called cathedral glass, the hand-cast glass that was often used for homes and offices in the 1930s. A natural quartz crystal attached to a piece of steel bar and laid down on a mirror forms a paddle as if to conquer the river to the afterlife. And up on the wall hangs a piece of telegraph pole whose insulators have been replaced by pieces of quartz that carry energy rather than shield us from it. Time and again Vandeweghe uses contemporary objects or materials that he charges up with meanings from spirituality, religion or superstition.

In her work Katleen Vinck (1976) combines sculpture, architecture, scenography and photography. Her practice arises from a fascination for the symbolism of archetypal structures from nature such as caves and hills. She shows two large prints of carved and semi-elevated craters that place us in front of a riddle: what do we actually see here? Is it a lunar or an earthly landscape? Is it nature or culture? A crater or excavations? The result of a sudden disaster or a gradual process? She also shows a large grey bunker that seems to float on a thin metal base. Its title, ‘Legendary Land’, refers both to what has existed in the past and what may arise in the future. The artist once again plays with the contradiction between culture - nature, the clearly defined lines versus the fragility that time and erosion have brought.

Timo van Grinsven(1985) is known for assemblages in which he applies his own very own logic. The same goes for the series of graphic works he shows here. At first sight they seem to be frames filled with precise drawings and well-kept collages. But the logic behind what van Grinsven shows is recalcitrant. What are the strange drawings on the headgear of the man lying down and what does the ceramic on the frame refer to? What does van Grinsven mean by the words under the drawing of the flint: "This doesn't concern the future”? And are those eyes on top of the letters? We get glimpses of meaning, but time and again the world of van Grinsven escapes like water between our fingers. "Drawings are like a space in which you place things. The drawing sheet has a border, this border is not the end of the work. It is like a photograph, where an invisible world also moves around the cut-out reality," says the artist.

⍧☋☨ plays with three different but related oeuvres in which the division
of objects, the making of cut-outs
from landscape and time, the playing with layouts and categories, is a recurring theme.

The wooden parts which constitute WOOD SCREWS AND FRILLS stem from further reflection on modular systems and their reductive spirit that aims at the highest employability with a minimum number of parts. Observing these principles of modularity and grid in relation to the designs and uses they produce, we learned that just like modularity lead us to the idea of efficiency, the grid drives us to reflect its uniform, repetitive and practical nature. This awareness incited us to create parts that have a playful potential, unsystematic patterns and sensory value. Produced by woodturning, the parts reflect the variability of shapes and typology of daily object generated by this technique.

38 | Gijs Van Vaerenbergh - Rethink Redraw Rebar

Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh are both architects.But theydon’tlimit themselves tomakingbuildings, they also design artworks and installations for the public space. Among others, they designed a fictitious dome for theSt-Michielskerk in Leuven('The Upside Dome', 2010), the ‘see through' church in Borgloon ('Reading Between The Lines' (2011)). They made designs with pieces of construction cranes('Framework, 2012 or 'Bridge', 2014), or a steel labyrinth (C-mine, 2015), an arcade (Kruibeke, 2015), and a concrete pavilion (Hooglede, 2017). And they recently won a competition for a 'folly', footbridge and maze for the park of Huis Doorn near Utrecht.

The work of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh is as diverse as it is coherent. Transformation is central to their work. They subject well-known architectural typologies such as the church, the gate, the arch, the arcade, the pedestal and the column to transformations. Up to now they have distinguished five processes, five forms of transformation that they apply in their projects. These are drawing, bending, cutting, assembling and mirroring. They devoted a whole booklet ('Cross Section', published by Ruby Press) to these different methods and the role they play in their various projects. They do not consider this series of transformations as a static whole:the series is steadily expanding.

The first gallery exhibition by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh at Valerie Traan two years ago presented a sample of their multifaceted work in which these different aspects were addressed. These included a number of works thattake spatial drawing as their theme, as well as a work that makes use of the construction material of reinforcing steel. In their new exhibition they explore this theme in more depth. Thetheme is summarised in the title of the exhibition: Rethink, Redraw, Rebar.

The rethinkingand redrawing of basic forms is a recurring theme in the work of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh. Again and again, the re-drawing and rethinkingof typologies is central to their work. The somewhat strange title'rebar' refers to reinforcing steel - 'reinforced steel bars' - as used in concrete construction. However, these worksdo not useconcrete as an artistic elementbut the basic steel structure hidden in the concrete. The reinforcement steel refers toa temporary condition, as if the works were unfinished. In earlier works, too, they played with the theme of the unfinished.

The exhibition opens with REBAR FOR A COLUMN, a rebar steel cage designed to cast the sculpture of a column in concrete. Butthe reinforcement, which would be hidden in an ordinary building project, is here the sculpture itself. The structure, the 'temporary' intermediate phase of the steel reinforcement, becomes the work itself, becomes sculpture itself. Just like in a classical reinforcement cage, anarticulation is created bycombining thicker reinforcement in the length withfiner cross reinforcement or braces. (The work plays out the contrast between an ancient classical building element and contemporary building elements).

This work fits thematically with a series of other works in the exhibition that refer to the unfinished condition of the reinforcement cage and the reinforcement mesh. REBAR FOR A HAND SCULPTURE shows a large sculpture in reinforcement steel in the form of an open hand. The sculpture suggests that it is a fragment of a larger figurative statue. This work shows how the projects of Gijs Van Vaerenbergh are no longer exclusively abstract, but also figurative. They refer not only to archetypal architectural elements such as a column, a church, a bridge or a windmill, but also to the archetype of sculpture, namely the human figure, such as a hand and a face. For the provincial Green Domain Hoge Mouw in Kasterlee, for example, they designed a large sloping head in steel planes that would lie on the eroded top of a dune. The construction of the human figure from planes is reminiscent of early forms of abstraction.

These last two works can be seen as a diptych, in the sense that they both refer to the reinforcement cage from the building construction, to an unfinished concrete sculpture.

Another diptych consists of works that refer to textiles. REBAR FOR A FLAG SCULPTURE transforms a standard reinforcement net - as used to cast concrete floor slabs - into a flag on a stick. The net is folded manually and bent until it assumes the undulations of a flag in the wind. The wonderful thing about this flag sculpture is that it has been reduced to its essential form and does not reveal any colour, part or nationality. Gijs Van Vaerenbergh came up with the perfect neutral flag, the essence of a flag. A flag that for once is not coloured, filled with human preferences or envy. In addition, Gijs Van Vaerenbergh also shows REBAR FOR A DRAPE SCULPTURE, a variant in which the flag is used as a hand or dishcloth hung from a point on the wall.

In addition, a reinforcement mesh is used in a different way. The work REBAR COMPOSITION shows a two-dimensional composition of a rectangular and round reinforcement net that is partially hung over anotherone. This work explicitly refers to the two-dimensional drawing and plays with transparency.

Besides these works that explicitly refer to the reinforcement cage and the reinforcement mesh, the exhibition also contains an in-situ installation that uses the reinforcement steel in a more free and abstract way. In the large space on the ground floor REBAR DRAWINGis shown. The viewer is confronted with a coil, a 16 mm thick tangle of reinforcement steel that, as it were, takes over the gallery's lower space and is stretched between the ceiling and the floor. In such a way that itforms an eye, a lens throughwhich you can look at the garden, or from the garden tothe gallery. It functionsas a drawing in the space, with the white gallery walls as background. This, thelargest work in the exhibition,is thematically related to the smallest work, GORDIAN KNOT. This is an 'inextricable' knot made up of various short segments. In miniature it echoesthe large coil.

This series of works forms a coherent whole that explores the possibilities of reinforcing steel. As a kind of counterpoint in the exhibition, a series of mirror works are hung up. ThisMIRROR series showsthe effect of a certain action on a reflecting inox sheet. This action distorts the plate and thus also the mirror image of the space and the works of art standing in the space. The mirrors thus enter into a dialogue with the REBAR sculptures. This series started with the previous exhibition. MIRROR I and MIRROR II were shown then, with the mirrors pierced by the nails used to hang them. These works will be shown again, supplemented by six new mirrors. MIRROR V toVI show the impact of gun shots on the mirror image. In MIRROR VII tem IX the surface of the mirror is distorted by frequent scratching of the same line.

GVV/MH
October 2018

Pictures by Filip Dujardin

2 | the FRONT SPACE - Clarisse Bruynbroeck, Two times the same moment

Clarisse Bruynbroeck repeatedly registered the road her hands travel during the first hours after her awakening. Dozens of objects- over which almost everyone passes mindlessly- were carefully beheld and listed by her. Sheet, duvet, bedroom door… These are objects that fascinate Bruynbroeck because of their banality, materiality and often simple and ill-considerate appearance. This numeration formed the starting point for a material investigation to our interaction with daily rituals and the pertaining objects.

We re-encounter some of the summed objects at the exhibition space. These imitations form for Bruynbroeck a method to dwell on the relation between man and object and to question their accordance. She analyses and demonstrates the way in which our use leaves traces, imperfections or draws objects. By substituting the original material of a pillow or a curtain by chamois or aluminium, the functional aspect of these objects is driven back. This is an intervention by way of which Bruynbroeck brings the sculptural, aesthetic and poetic qualities of these banal objects to the foreground.

The mostly simple appearance of these objects is the outcome of their functional character. A towel or a hairband always looks more or less the same. ‘Design’ or variation in the appearance is generally absent, which is a possible explanation for one often passing over these objects. By tracing these objects back to their archetypes, performed in another matter, Bruynbroeck plays with this aspect.

Clarisse Bruynbroeck (1989, Belgium) lives and works in Antwerp. In 2012 she graduated from Sint-Lucas, Antwerp with a Masters in Jewelry and Goldsmithing. In 2016 she founded her own jewelry label Woche. Besides she creates installations and objects which give expression to a constant curiosity towards her environment. The past years she exposed in, among others, The marked body, Valerie Traan (Antwerp, BE), chapter one ≈ chapter one, BIKINI Art Space (Basel, CH) and at arts festival Watou 2018 (Watou, BE). Clarisse Bruynbroeck also made expositions in cooperation with Ralph Collier. The duo organized the group exposition En Cours d’installation for Valerie Traan in 2017 at Rivoli (Brussels, BE) where her work was shown as well.

‘The narrative image’ is my main concern. I mostly make paintings and books, investigating the tension between an image with painterly qualities and the notion of a story. This narrative only exists in the image and can’t be told in another language, comparable to the spectacle of episodes in the circus. You jump from atmosphere to atmosphere which makes sense in the tent, but when you get back in the real world you can’t exactly tell what you just witnessed. I used to be in the circus, which is an important inspiration for my fictional and autobiographical web of stories and images. Other themes that fascinate me are the leprechaun, the everyday, the constructed image, dancing and one of the most important ones: observing. My work is shaped by different ways of observing: observing like a child, who doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking at and fantasizes, voyeuristic observing, looking at something that doesn’t know it’s being watched and actively observing, by looking at something, you become part of what you’re observing.

37| Pieter Huybrechts en Erki De Vries - THE FOLD

Pieter Huybrechts and Erki De Vries show The Fold at gallery valerie_traan in Antwerp (from 6 September to 20 October, 2018). The Fold is an exhibition that falls under The Book Project that De Vries and Huybrechts have been working on since 2012. At the same time they showcase work at the castle of Horst in Holsbeek, during the Arts & Music festival (from September 7 to October 28, 2018), which consists of a monumental installation that also fits within their Book Project.

The Fold consists of various visual elements. Firstly, there is an installation in the gallery that is once again entangled with the space where it is shown. In addition, there are several new series of works that have emerged from earlier installations in Museum M, CC Mechelen, and Lokaal 01.

'The fold announces that the inside is nothing more than a fold of the outside'

Simon O'Sullivan, Definition: 'Fold',

The Deleuze Dictionary (2005)

The Fold not only refers to their latest work which is a folded form (in relation to the invitation), but is also characteristic of their working method within The Book Project. The Fold is about re-reading existing information by folding reality, bending or repeating ‘the real’ into a new space.

The Book Project is an investigation of an apparent simplicity. The space it exists in is mainly used as a visual given. And yet the result is complex, because it generates a wider space than the actual space the work is based upon. You are invited to look further than meets the eye, and to look at monumentality in a newly formed image.

Besides De Fold, De Vries and Huybrechts show a new installation during the exhibition of the annual open-air festival at the castle of Horst. This installation is a continuation of the monumental installation Evolving Spaces that was shown last year in CC Mechelen. The work at Horst is placed outdoors in an open field, and focuses on it’s natural environment.

The elaborated lecture, which De Vries and Huybrechts realized in relation to Evolving Spaces, is further developed here in a more compact, yet broad framework. The actual presentation and photographic distortions can be read alongside each other, which evokes a challenging interpretation of the outdoor space.

IN GENERAL about The Book Project

The Book Project started in 2012 with the development of an installation that was shaped into a sculpture in the form of a book. This became a kaleidoscopic sequence of successive spaces contained in a fan-fold.

The Book Project has become a multi-year project in which installation, photography and the development of the book come together. An important aspect is the inclusion and creation of space. De Vries and Huybrechts repeatedly examine how the characteristic of an environment can be represented by repeating them or changing their position. Both the space itself and the process of looking, as well as the occupation of space, are considered.

This method involves installations, sculptures and also two-dimensional works that originate from these installations. The evolution from installation to book or to an image of the installation or even a reduction of it, ensure that there is unprecedented depth in their imagery, and you will always be presented with the option to look further than you originally considered.

Details of the space are formed into a whole new space. By placing image upon image, The Book Project always reveals a new space, originating from existing information.

Pieter Huybrechts (° 1977) studied at the KASK in Antwerp. His photographic practice is characterized by a serial approach of the image and a fascination of texture and patterns. His research is based upon visual language and focusing on visualizing the subject that is formed by the process of the visualization itself, as well as a reflection on the medium of photography. The works are shown in installations, in a way that the image influences the shaping of the space.

Erki De Vries (° 1978) studied at the Karel de Grote College in Antwerp, followed a postgraduate in visual arts in Breda and started in 2004 at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerp. In his installations and video works De Vries invariably investigates the mental impact of the space on the viewer, by experimenting with matter, light and sound. Space becomes an active influencer.

Object Interview #16: "What if benches were playing hide and seek?"

An interview with the Biospheric Bench by designers Bas Smets and Eliane Le Roux.

36 | Bas Smets & Eliane Le Roux present the BIOSPHERIC BENCH

The bench expresses the biospheric process between planetary life and solar energy. Living matter uses the latter to produce ever more material. Most of this former life gets deposited and compacted into sedimentary rocks.

The biospheric bench is composed of carefully selected sedimentary stones, former life petrified. Cut to a triangular shape, these stones are tied together by an elastic band and kept at distance by printed plastic elements, both derivates from fossil fuels. Fourteen stones form a diamond shape, different diamonds are combined to create complex figures.

Much like soil samples, the stacked pieces of the biospheric bench tell a prehistoric story of living matter transformed into solid material, as a compression in time and space of the biospheric process.

The bench and its research project will be presented in a specially conceived temporary forest.

35 | PAUL GEES | under pressure '18

There are very few artists who have an oeuvre as consistent as that of Paul Gees (Aalst, 1949). Since theearly ’80s, his sculptures explore a single theme: tension. Tension is also the subject of Gees’ new exhibition, his first one in gallery Valerie Traan in Antwerp, which bears the characteristic title ‘Under Pressure’18’.

Gees is known for his sculptures in which he combines steel, wood and stone in a shaky balance. He himself names Richard Serra and Carl André as great examples, but Gees has in fact created a worldall his own. His favourite materials are repeatedly confronted with primary forces. This creates a constant tension in his work in which especially wood suffers a great deal, as stone cleaves it, steel stretches it or exposes it to the elements. Primary elements and natural forces reign in Paul Gees’ universe.

Architecture is also important for Gees (he taught for many years at the higher Architecture institute Sint-Lukas Brussel-Gent).

‘Undoubling’ (1982), the first work that I saw of him, is a column of tiles reaching until the ceiling. This heap was placed next to a pilar of the building. The pilar stood dead straight, it denied that it was a subject of tension. Paul Gees’ construction next to it, purposely crooked and skew, made the tension visible and tangible.

In the exposition at Valerie Traan, Gees shows about fifty works from the period 1986-2017. In the entrance hallt hree stones, piled up onhighstakes, form a shaky construction. Together theylook like a samurai-helmet ora pagoda (the influence of Eastern art on Gees’ work is unmistakable). Gees named the work ‘At the extremity’ (2015). In the middle of the gallery there is ‘Capstone’ (1988), a large circle of thin steel that is kept together and put under pressure by a capstone- as used in architectural bows and domes. Within and outside of the gallery big and small confrontations-between wood, stone and steel, are shown in the most diverse forms and combinations.

Unique in this exposition is that Gees’ little shown drawings get a place of honour. In a completely different medium, he succeeds in translating his favourite theme into two dimensions: tension becomes part of the composition, of the image. Here too Gees works with contrasting mediums such as Chinese ink and gouache, but also metal and paint. From time to time he uses coloured or weathered backgrounds (in one fabulous work he draws on on paperwith an oil stain). Both in his drawings and in his sculptures, Paul Gees work constantly evokes tension. It has done so for over forty years.

33 | Muller Van Severen | Fireworks

Valerie Traan Gallery presents Fireworks, a new exhibition by Muller Van Severen. De series of ‘paravents’ is being shown in Belgium for the first time, after a previous succesful presentation in Milan. Besides these paravents, produced in close collaboration with Emaillerie Belge, the designer duo is also showing new tables.

Fireworksis part of the ongoing research by Muller Van Severen around the interactions between space and the objects that occupy it. They explore a sense of verticality and have conceived these works as abstract compositions that relate directly to the architecture. Whereas tables, desks, or lamps, engage in a rather linear dialogue with space, enamel is shown to advantage in more vertical shapes. Therefore, the paravents are the ideal bearers of this material.

The paravents are composed by various realisations of curved sheets of metal, coated with vitrified enamel. The strong enamel has a certain tactile quality to it, but also invites care. The production was an experiment. Every screen therefore reveals an essence and is the result of a meticulous quest for detail and a fascinating artisan process.

The colourful, whimsical shapes define portions of the space. The new tables, with their more landscape-like horizontality, ensure the necessary balance in the spacious architecture of Valerie Traan Gallery. The tables and paravents, shown in duo’s, complete each other. They generate a dynamic dialogue between the vertical and the horizontal, the functional and the aesthetical.

In 2011, Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen, both artists, decided to do a joint furniture project, at the request of Valerie Traan Gallery, which specializes in the space between art, design and architecture. The couple have been designing under the name Muller Van Severen ever since and their first furniture and lighting sculptures quickly captured international attention. Fireworks is their fourth solo exhibition at Valerie Traan Gallery, which continues to support the duo and show and distribute their creations in what is still a fruitful and productive collaboration.

Fireworks has been made possible thanks to he support of Tanguy Van Quickenborne and Emaillerie Belge.

A cooperation between the Jewellery Design department of St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp, Walter Fischer GmbH Co. and Valerie Traan Gallery

The Jewellery Design department of St Lucas School of Arts Antwerp presents, from 8 February until 17 March, the exhibition ‘From Walter to Valerie’ at Valerie Traan Gallery. Together with students from St Lucas Antwerp, international and Belgian designers will display pieces of jewellery that have been made using the industrially manufactured chains of Walter Fischer.

The exhibition takes place in the context of ‘Speaking Jewellery’, a research project initiated by the ‘Precious Dialogue’ research platform of St Lucas Antwerp. The project examines the concept of jewellerynessfrom an artistic perspective: what are the qualities and characteristics that make an object into a piece of jewellery? The chain – as an endless series of interconnected links – takes centre stage in this project. Although it is rather insignificant in contemporary jewellery and mainly has a supporting function, it has the power to function as a piece of jewellery. It effortlessly follows every curve of the body and forms a perfect catenary when held up by its tips. What’s more, the chain has a rich archive of social, cultural and historical references and meanings.

Designers, students and researchers worked with chains made by Walter Fischer, one of the world’s largest chain manufacturers. Located in Idar-Oberstein, the company produces annually between 30 and 40 tons of chain that are mainly supplied to wholesalers, makers and labels in the fashion and jewellery sectors. For this project, Walter Fischer donated more than 400 metres of chain, each designer receiving ten metres with which to create a wearable piece of jewellery.

An edition of most designs will be available in the gallery during the exhibition.

INVITATION an exhibition by laend

Laend

Diane Steverlynck, Anne Masson, Eric Chevalier

09.11.2017 | 13.01.2018

OPENING DRINK 09.11. 2017 | 4-9PM

Diane Steverlynck, Anne Masson and Eric Chevalier collaborate regularly to conceptualise objects that reveil common preoccupations. They gather a part of their productions from 2014 onwards, under the platform laend.

They share on the one hand an interest for the fabrication processes, on the other their work presents a certain elasticity of status and usage, stimulating ones imagination and spontaneously provoking a bond of familiarity with the users.

Invitation designs a stroll, articulating their individual paths and their crossroads. Carpets and blankets, one piece never identical to the other, constitute fluid territories with generous textures. These dialogue with the recent Teatrino of Diane Steverlynck’s small carved mirrors that promptly capture the space.

As asked by the trio, Erwin De Muer has conceived metalic structures, wearing especially dense and pictorial surfaces of felt.

Their studio practice, experimental and organique, sometimes takes the designers to question their previous productions, or to invest the remains in a joyful liberty. The colours always manifest themself lively, materialising rhythms and layers. It testifies singular and often mysterious metamorphosis, transforming from fabric waste to Tapa, or from fibre to wire, creating landscapes in the blankets and the carpets.

Exactly 50 years after the signing of the international Outer Space Treaty, Annemie Augustijns enters into dialogue with the cosmos, not by way of watching it, but by looking right next to it and observing the way in which the meaning of the cosmos has been reconstructed in figures, objects and constellations on earth. I feel a breeze from other planets makes the cosmos palpable and allows us a look behind the scenes of astronomy and spacecraft.

Annemie Augustijns leads us to appreciate new connections that demonstrate the fragility and the lived reality of this environment. She shows us the daily reality with all its improvisations and fantasies which act as a patina on top of the conventions and ambitions of a technological, scientific and ideological project – the conquest of the cosmos.

David Peleman

(UGent – Vakgroep Architectuur & Stedenbouw)

En cours d'installation

En cours d’installation is a group exhibition initiated by valerie_traan gallery that investigates the boundaries of materiality/immateriality and­ its condition of appearance. The title of this exhibition refers to a marker of time that poses an unfinished process, where things don’t remain in a frozen state and evolve through different conditions.

En cours d’installation is not just a presentation of a group of objects. It is rather an act of creation where elements of light, colour and smell determine the atmosphere and also formally recognizable elements such as a table, a chair and a glass. The artists that are brought together in this exhibition certainly display a number of traits in common. These features don’t come in the form of a theme, technique or particular visual source but they connect through their similar intuition or approach towards defining the vitality of animage or anobject.

valerie_traan is a space for objects and subjects often balancing on the dividing line between design, art and architecture. For this project, that takes place at the Rivoli building in Brussels, valerie_traan invites Clarisse Bruynbroeck and Ralph Collier to create an exhibition that represents the mindset of the gallery. Therefore, En cours d’installation is an encounter between artists who have a history with the gallery in dialogue with new voices.

D.D.Trans | INFIDELS

“Stuff” is the name we give today as well to everyday possessions as to illegal drugs. That can't be a coincidence. Through the decline of craftsmanship and the ease of buying, the outlook of a lot of our “things” has acquired an almost anesthetizing naturalness. Prior to the mass fabrication of utensils there was a long, almost Darwinist period in which form and function were fine tuned by trial and error to form an ideal, practical shape. That shape determines the right ellipse of a good shoe lift, the dimensions and weight of a darts arrow, the colors and maneuverability of a fly screen, the rounded edges of dice. That dug-in, silent design gives everyday objects a recognizability and simplicity that requires no further analysis.

What poetry can do with words, D.D.Trans does with domestic, garden- and kitchen utensils; with a small twist he short circuits the alliance between fabricated things and their meaning. But being simple is not identical to being simplistic. Guileless but careful he bends things, kindled by an association, a whiff of rebellion, and a subcutaneous, understated melancholy.

Two DIY plastic straps form a heart. If you have used them before you know: without scissors or pliers they won't come lose. Untying them is destroying them. The end of a bended darts arrow casts a small, hart shaped shadow – the work of an invisible cupid. Dice stick together in a fixed combination: fortune is bound to strike with only sixes. Elsewhere, with a wink and the addition of one label, a bright yellow shoe lift is turned into a banana. A fly screen, rolled up or flatly molten on a white plane, surprisingly looks like a painting.

The work of D.D.Trans may look superficial, but it digs deeper than at first sight appears. “Light hearted” better covers the content: roguish, playful, and non-monumental he turns objects - in the eyes of a good spectator - into a less noncommittal state. With small gestures he questions the language of things. He pulls a spring and cocks it. More than that: unpretentious but well-aimed he researches the status of a found object as artwork.

Frederik Van Laere

RIKKERT PAAUW

For Dutch designer Rikkert Paauw, the ground materials for building design simply lay in the streets. One of his favorite occupations consists of creating design on location, made out of thrown away materials he finds on the spot. In Toulon for instance, he constructed a table out of tiles found in the neighborhood, in Milan garbage wood resulted in a lamp poste and in Vienna old littered shelves metamorphosed into a small public building. “Using garbage is pure logics”, the designer says. “If I were to live in the woods, I’d use branches of trees”.

By transforming the city’s waste into installations within that same city, Rikkert keeps the circle of his circular design very short and builds a story that goes far beyond sustainability or reuse. He creates artful concrescences of the environment, termite mounds — so to speak — within the city that describes its inhabitants. “For instance, I noticed that the chipboards in Saint-Petersburg were a lot more beautiful than elsewhere”, tells Rikkert. “In Milan, I remarked that the communication with the people ran smoother and that the litter in general was more colorful and smooth”.

The shape of Rikkert’s work is most of the time determined by his findings, and thus by coincidence. Despite the element of Fate, Rikkert upholds a very clear design language. He manages to collate different rough forms and a waver of colors in one serene design. His natural feeling for rhythm and color is astounding. Rikkert Paauw literally creates order in chaos.

Local litter isn’t the only darling of this designer. Modular design is another one. Make that: modularity pushed to the extreme. For a project in Sydney he’d thought up Verbindingstuk, a metal linker to fasten a horizontal beam to a vertical one. That simple object allows people from all over the world to build anything with the (thrown away) woods locally available. Design doesn’t get more modular than this. Although: “At Valerie Traan I’ll present a closet that consists solely of steal pins put in the wall”, Rikkert says. “The shelves come from the streets or wherever I find them”. This is a closet that can be reshaped endlessly.

Rikkert will also show unassigned work: an adapted Ikea chair he found in the streets. “It’s a simple, basic chair with a well shaped seat”, he explains. “I didn’t like the trestle of the chair though, so I changed it with another one I’ve found”. And so, a recycled Ikea chair becomes a pièce de résistance. Consider it the cliffhanger of the show.

26 | GIJS VAN VAERENBERGH - SECTIONS

Gijs Van Vaerenbergh built in recent years a series of site-specific installations in public space. The starting point for this are architectural typologies such as the church, the gate, the arch, the arcade, the base, the column. In galerie_valerie_traan they show a selection of scale models of these installations in relation to new autonomous sculptures on the one hand and a spatial intervention on the other. 'Sections' refers both to the spatial configuration of the exhibition and to the design strategies that Gijs Van Vaerenbergh apply in their work.

23 | UNFOLD recollected

With RECOLLECTED, Unfold is showing its body of work from a different angle. The Antwerp-based design studio is best known for their conceptual installations that bring stories about new ways of making, manufacturing, appropriation and distributing in a digital age. The objects taking part in these installations - vases, tableware, jugs - are props used for telling the bigger story. But in UNFOLD/RECOLLECTED, these props become the protagonists. Arranged on a handful of custom made trays, the different objects are starting to connect to each other, new families are composed and other stories unfold.